ArtSeen

ArtSeen

In 1960, Frank Lobdell told an interviewer being anonymous is really the best condition to be able to create. Thankfully, in the half-century that has passed since the artist made this remark, he hasnt quite achieved his goal, but he has gone his own way, building upon his early encounters with the work of Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, of other Abstract Expressionists and, most importantly, Pablo Picasso.

ArtSeen

Stanley Whitney has been exploring the fundamentals of painting for over 30 years. His recent geometric abstractions flow from one to the next and then back again through color, line, position, surface, and depth. Anchored in their physical substance they transcend mere matter-of-factness and open the mind to complex geometries of thought and feeling, what Agnes Martin once referred to as non-objective experiences.

ArtSeen

Every once in a while a work of art splits across your consciousness like a cracked egg. That happened in late Decemberwith two paintings, actuallyat the McKee Gallerys exhibition of small figurative panels by Philip Guston dating from 1969 to 1973, presented here as a group for the first time.

ArtSeen

Curating an index of Iran is a daunting task given that many of the artists included in the exhibition actually live and work in Tehran and continue to produce social and political comments. The Promise of Lossan ironic title indeedmarks a different approach from most of the exhibitions of Iranian art that were shown in New York during the summer of 2009.

ArtSeen

In New Mirrors: Painting in a Transparent World, a group show at Exit Art, curator Herb Tam suggests that painters, confronting a digital onslaught in which shifting identities are continually updated and instantly distributed, are compelled to deconstruct the logistics of painting in a similar fashion.

ArtSeen

Solo exhibitions of Joseph Beuys (19211986) are rare, and the focus of curator Pamela Kort for the current show at Mary Boone is on the artists iconic multiples and editions, augmented by a few original masterpiecesaltogether more than 175 works that create a partial political and ironic-philosophical time capsule.

ArtSeen

In two current exhibitions, Omer Fast shows us that hes one of the rare artists working in video who is capable of technical magic even as he strips the medium bare, exposing its power to conflate truth and fiction.

ArtSeen

At Leslie Tonkonow, a survey of Land Art icon Agnes Denes fits this contemplative criterion with over 100 photographs documenting the individual performances and earthwork interventions made by the artist from the late 60s onward, as well as chronicling, via meticulously rendered drawings and prints, her scientifically-based research into the essence of human nature and the paradoxical dialectic of philosophical thought.

ArtSeen

One of the most striking things about Frances Barths acrylic paintings is how clearly straightforward they are. Having stated as much, the complexity of her dialectical approach slowly starts to unfold.

ArtSeen

Art that comments on its own medium and art that comments on political events are often assigned to separate categories, attracting different audiences, different kinds of critical responses, different ways of looking.